AsianVersionOfET wrote: ↑

April 11th, 2022, 2:18 pm

Oppie gonna be doing some car chase shit ala Bourne Supremacy

THE PRODUCTION DESIGN AND LOCATIONS

The mission of building the world of Oppenheimer was entrusted to production designer Ruth De Jong, whose credits include Nope, Us and Manchester by the Sea.

De Jong and Christopher Nolan spent weeks steeping themselves in research to develop an aesthetic that was authentic yet not slavishly beholden to reference. Nolan prefers a timeless look for his films, even one such as Oppenheimer, which is set in a distinct historical period. Nolan encouraged De Jong to not be fussy or precious about period details. He liked the idea of pushing the modernism, allowing the cars, phones or other pieces of technology to be of-the-moment. It was a choice fitting for a story about a man chasing the future, told through his perspective. “Chris would always say, ‘Ruth, I’m not making a documentary snooze fest,’” De Jong says with a laugh. “That was always helpful to hear because I would get very ingrained in the research. Instead, our process was to see the real thing, understand its essence, and then divorce ourselves from its form and go make our picture.”

Los Alamos

In 2021, De Jong started working with Nolan, producer Emma Thomas and executive producer THOMAS HAYSLIP on a design that could give them everything they needed, with maximum efficiency. (The film shot in five major locations, with Nolan filming mostly in New Mexico.) Her first assignment was to develop Oppenheimer’s version of Los Alamos, homebase for the Manhattan Project. “Chris liked to call it ‘our little Western town,’ which is a few small buildings and two gunslingers, and that’s about all you see,” Hayslip says. “But there’s nothing little about Los Alamos, and much of our work was as much about creating the illusion of the place as it was recreating it.”

• Nolan did consider shooting the film at the real Los Alamos, where some of the structures built for the Manhattan Project are preserved. But the current location no longer matches the Los Alamos of the Manhattan Project, with modern buildings— including a Starbucks—that would have been too difficult or costly to frame out or eliminate with digital technology.
• De Jong drew up an elaborate recreation of Los Alamos, which was then rendered physically as a 3D white model at the preproduction facility. The model grew so large that it had to be stored in the production office backyard. It began to shrink as the producers began to realize that building a full-scale replica of Los Alamos with exteriors and interiors would become cost prohibitive.
• As the filmmakers modified their plans, a novel strategy emerged: They would build exteriors for their Los Alamos at Ghost Ranch, a 21,000-acre retreat in Northern New Mexico, and shoot most of the interiors at the real Los Alamos. This approach proved energizing for the cast, as it allowed Cillian Murphy and Emily Blunt to shoot scenes in the very home where the Oppenheimers had lived. “Chris wants everything to feel authentic, whether shooting in the actual places where the people in the Manhattan Project lived or building things from scratch,” producer Charles Roven says. “He also likes films to feel hand-made, not made in a studio or generated with computer-generated imagery. You feel that throughout the movie, particularly in the area of practical effects, whether it’s putting snow on the ground, or creating ripples in a pond, which is a recurring motif in the movie, or how he approached the first atomic bomb explosion.”

The Trinity Test Site

• Nolan’s team received permission to shoot at White Sands Proving Ground, at the very place where the Trinity test was conducted. But the location remains an active military base, and the production couldn’t afford to go dark for six-to-eight hours each day while the military practiced bombing runs and tested radar.
• Instead, Nolan built his version of the Trinity test site—whose signature feature was a 100-foot steel tower—and the far-away bunker where Oppenheimer watched the detonation, in Belen, New Mexico.

Other Locations

• Oppenheimer filmed on the grounds of the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton University where Oppenheimer and Einstein worked together after World War II, utilizing the original IAS building where Oppenheimer resided as Director.
• Oppenheimer’s old office had been remodeled and looked too modern. But Einstein’s old office has been preserved, and the production was given permission to use it and redress it to create Oppenheimer’s office. In addition, Nolan shot INT/EXT of the Director’s home, the original house Oppenheimer and Kitty lived in during their time at IAS, as well as the surrounding grounds and pond.